


Just Checking: Nathan and Audrey

by serendipityxxi



Series: Just Checking [2]
Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 20:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5980564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipityxxi/pseuds/serendipityxxi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>6 times one of our OT3 had to check just to make sure one of the others is okay post the Troubles and one time they didn't have to. Nathan checks in on Audrey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Checking: Nathan and Audrey

Audrey hates the days when Nathan has to check continuously that she and Duke are okay. A tenseness comes over his frame, around his eyes, his mouth, in his shoulders and hands. He does his best to cover it, relegates himself to texts and the occasional phone call that would be casual but for the undercurrent of worry they still carry. In the evenings when they're all back together he is curt (even by Nathan's standards), snappy and hyper-vigilant, watching their every move anxiously. He seems to take it as a personal failure that he needs the reassurance. She hates that the most. Garland Wuornos was a good man but he had some dumb ideas on how to handle emotions that Nathan has had to do his best to ignore or get out from under now.

So Audrey has learned to read the signs and tries to help him as best she can. She never makes it a big deal, never makes him feel like he’s bothering her on days like that. Instead when the bell over the door at Rosemary’s rings and Nathan comes in looking lost and frantic she takes it as a good sign that maybe he understands it's okay to reach out to them. 

“Nathan!" She calls out to him, "over here.”

“Parker!” he says her name like a reprieve from going to the electric chair and looks at her like she’s unlocked the shackles and is holding open the cell door. Audrey doesn’t feel like she deserves that look, she’s just Audrey in her blue plaid shirt with the coffee stain on the pocket, her hair in a messy bun held together with a pencil.

She wraps her hand around his wrist, making sure he can feel her fingers warm and steady on his skin. His pulse is racing under her touch and she can see his free hand clenching around something in his pocket, probably the sharp edge of his badge. He does that on bad days to make sure the Troubles are still gone. She hates that he still has bad days.

She doesn’t ask _what are you doing here,_ doesn’t say _I’ve only been gone twenty minutes._ She doesn’t reprimand that he just said he was fine and _doesn't care that she's going on the donut run._ She makes jokes instead, gently, carefully.

“Come to carry my books to class for me, Wuornos?” she asks, swinging his hand lightly, casually, like all is right in their world, because it is, it’s just...hard to believe sometimes. She gets that.

“No,” Nathan denies automatically then takes a deep breath and seems to really hear what she was saying. He stammers over the response, the words clumsy on his tongue “just making sure you don’t eat all the jelly before you get back,” but his blue eyes are going from panicked to grateful. He knows what she’s doing, she knows he does, but if they both pretend like everything is okay, eventually it will be. That’s the theory anyway. It’s been working so far.

She smiles at him softly and he drops her hand and cups her jaw and kisses her right there in Rosemary’s. His fingers are so gentle as they stroke up her neck and cup the back of her head, as gentle as his lips are heavy, all that panic redirected into this one act of reassurance. Audrey snakes her arms beneath his jacket and wraps them around his lean waist, tugs him in so she’s pressed against him all along their torsos.

When they part her next words are a breathy tease, “I should eat all the jelly donuts more often if this is the bribe for saving you one.” She strokes her fingers gently down the side of his face and Nathan leans into her touch like a cat, his eyes even fall shut for a second.

He opens his eyes and she hands him the bag of pastries to carry. She weaves her fingers between those of his free hand so they’re pressed palm to palm, and leads him out the door into the sunshine of the late afternoon. She can feel him relaxing by increments as they walk and she talks, and they soak up each other’s company.

_The Troubles are over._


End file.
